Design Thinking for Startups - Are You Design Driven?

This presentation provides some best practices and tools to help small business entrepreneurs and startup founders in creating a culture of innovation.

Whether you're working on a web 2.0, iPhone or a physical gadget, these simple practices are universally applicable.

***Note****
I will be running a webinar in October 2009 to expand on the points mentioned in this presentation, study design thinking use cases and stories and answer questions. Please leave a comment and follow the discussion, or follow @amirkhella on twitter to get notified about the webinar.

Good deﬁnition. “A process of
creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained.” - Charles Burnette

School Life Real Life Mistakes
are learning Mistakes are punished. experiences. Failure is not tolerated. Failure breeds success. Given the questions; ﬁnd Ask great questions; ﬁnd the the right answers. best answers. Intuition and imagination Knowledge and certainty create potential for using foster conﬁdence. knowledge.

Design is not about products;
it’s about people. Think beyond tasks; Their lives. Their challenges. Their dreams. The user’s journey starts long before they click that button.

2. Understand and deﬁne the
problem you’re trying to solve. Take the time to ask a lot of annoying WHY questions. And don’t move to the solution space too soon.

Create a story. Our brains
are hardwired for stories. If we like them, we remember them forever. Like a good movie, design should tell a good story.

Communicate your story, and ask
people to tell you what they heard and what they think. * Don’t be afraid that someone will steal your story; it’s very likely that many people had that idea before you, and did nothing about it.

Sketch you ideas. You don’t
need to know how to draw in order to sketch. As long as your sketches capture your ideas, it doesn’t matter if they “don’t look good”.

Create a character for your
product What will your product be if it were a car? a phone? a shoe? Who will your product be if it were a movie star? a political ﬁgure? Describe your products in human-like adjectives.

7. Hire T-shaped individuals. They
tend to be professional in one area, but are skilled in many other areas. They are highly intuitive. And they work as bridges between disciplines.

Where to go from here?
•Follow me on Twitter: @amirkhella I tweet links, quick insights and advice about Design Thinking for Startups •Visit my blog: www.amirkhella.com I write short posts about design, business and life •Sign up for an upcoming webinar Get one-on-one design advice about your product and business Amir Khella User Experience Guru amir@fictiv.com